I was driving down the road when out of the corner of my eye I thought I saw a dead body wrapped in a plastic tarp in a ditch. So I turned around to go check it out.

In the interest of full disclosure I should tell you that this was not the first time that I’ve thought I found a dead body.

There have been others.

Many others.

I know that sounds kinda weird. But ever since I was a kid I’ve just sort of expected that I’m going to happen across a dead body some day. I’ve expected it so much that when I was in college and a friend of mine came home from work one day and announced that she had found a dead body at a gas station, I was secretly angry.

Okay. Maybe not sooooo secretly. Because when she told me I was like “Ummmm are you kidding me? Well there go my chances, I guess. Because seriously, what are the odds that two friends would each find dead bodies? It was supposed to be me. But I guess now it’s you. Whatever.”

And I know that a normal person would have possibly reacted with something more like “Oh my God are you okay? Let me get you a drink. You poor thing!” and crap like that. But when have I ever said that I’m normal?

Back in my younger days before my “friend” stole my body finding spotlight, I had big plans for how I would handle the event when the inevitable time came, and I would walk around my neighborhood with a camera and a notebook just so I’d be prepared.

When I eventually found my first body I would take notes, snap a few photos, and observe and decipher any and all clues. And I would do all of that before contacting the proper authorities so I would have my own “evidence” that I could use to solve the case before the police did, thereby landing me a ratings busting 2-parter on The Phil Donahue Show to discuss how it was that I became so incredibly brave and awesome.

After my whirlwind media tour I would start my own business and go down in history as the only kid to ever become a professional, crime-solving, private investigator.

Them’s totally reasonable goals if you ask me.

But it never happened.

And although I don’t expect it to happen quite as much as I used to (thanks to that college “friend” for ruining my odds), I am still quite susceptible to seeing dead bodies in various locations. Albeit dead bodies that always turn out to be things that, upon closer inspection, in no way resemble dead bodies at all.

But that doesn’t stop my brain from seeing what it thinks it sees and then convincing me that THIS is finally it and I MUST GO LOOK. Because one thing I do know is that the day that I finally decide NOT to go look is the day that I see on the news that somebody else found a body that was meant for me.

But would that really be so bad?

Because over time I’ve gotten a lot more neurotic than I was as a child. I’ve pretty much lost that badass, crime-solving confidence that I had as a carefree, dead body obsessed, child of the 80’s. Now I’m more prone to over-worrying about every what-if that my ADD riddled brain can come up with. Gone are the plans of notes and crime scene photos. Those plans have been replaced with mind-numbing panic about everything that could go awry when one stumbles across a dead person.

So that in mind, like I said in the first sentence…

I was driving down the road and out of the corner of my eye I thought I saw a dead body wrapped in a plastic tarp in a ditch. I decided I had to go back and check on. Here is the conversation I had with myself on that journey:

Holy shit! Was that a dead body?

I’m pretty sure that was a dead body.

No.

There’s no way that was a dead body.

It’s NEVER a dead body.

But it seriously was.

Wasn’t it?

If it IS a dead body I wonder who it is? I hope it’s an adult. Please let it be an adult. And I hope they’re old. Someone who was gonna die pretty soon anyways. And hopefully they were a total dick when they were alive too. Because I just don’t want to find out it was a nice person. Or a young person. Old and dicky is the only way I can deal with this. Maybe someone Rush Limbaugh-esque.

If it IS a body I hope it’s fresh. Okay, that sounds creepy. What I mean is I hope it’s not horribly decomposed. I could deal with a fresh body that still looks alive-ish much better than I could deal with a rotty one. I sooo could not deal with that. I mean, my eyes could probably handle it. I do watch The Walking Dead and everything. And my eyes? They’ve seen some stuff. But there’s pretty much no way that my nose could even begin to deal. I once barfed in the sink after smelling a glass of bad milk. And sometimes after I eat jerky my own farts make me gag. My nose is seriously not up to this.

If it IS a body and it IS super stinky I’m probably gonna barf on it. If I barf on the body would I get into trouble for tampering with evidence? Because I bet vomit would totally ruin the chances for a proper investigation. All that stomach acid and whatnot? I bet it would totally eat up any DNA left by the murderer. Wouldn’t it? It seems logical to me, but I’m wrong about things nearly all of the time sooooo…..

Okay. Calm down.

You KNOW it’s probably just some trash or an old throw rug or some shit like that.

It’s never a dead person.

But what if this time it is?!?!?

Okay. Here’s what’s gonna happen.

I’m gonna pull over a bit and see if I can see it from my window. If I can’t see it from the window then I’m gonna have to approach it on foot. But once I start approaching it on foot I run the risk of smelly funk gettin’ all up in my nose. And then the puke gates open. It’ll be like that elevator in The Shining but with the digested remains of every single thing that I ate on Binge Day Sunday. So maybe I should put some of that Burt’s Bees lip balm under my nose to thwart the smell particles from infiltrating my passages. But sometimes when you use good scents to try and cover up bad scents it just mixes to make the perfect storm of bad scents. Like (in the case of the Airwick I have in the bathroom) Sugar Cookie Exploding Diarrhea. Or, in this case, Pomegranate Mystery Corpse.

Maybe if can’t verify what it is from the car then I should just call 911 and tell them that I think I saw a dead body and then they can handle it. But the problem with that is that if it turns out to NOT be a body then the cops might get mad at me for wasting their time and it will be embarrassing. Kinda like that time when The Hub wanted to take me to the Emergency Room because we thought that my appendix was trying to burst but it turned out that I just needed to fart a lot. I’m sooooo glad that the farting started before we went to the ER and had the most embarrassing night of my life.

I have to be patient and wait until I know what it is. I cannot jump the gun here.

Breathe. Breathe. Breathe.

Ok, we’re here.

I think I’m gonna be able to see it from the road.

I’m just gonna pull over a bit…

Wait.

What’s that truck doing?

Why are THEY pulling over?

What. The. FRICK???

Oh HELL no! There’s no way in hell this is happening twice.

That dude is NOT gonna steal my freaking moment!

Shit! He’s running over there.

Wait. What if HE’s the murderer?

Maybe he was taking the body out to bury it and it fell out of the truck and now he’s come back to get it?

Oh my God that totally makes sense because why would someone purposely toss the body of their murder victim in the ditch on a major road?

And if that IS what’s going on then he already knows I’m onto him and he can totally see my license plate and I’m gonna be next on his People To Murder List.

I’m getting out of here.

Oh crap! He’s there! He’s got it!

Is it a body?

WTF IS IT?!?!?

Oh.

It’s just a plain old empty tarp that fell out of his truck.

I freaking knew it.

I’m so glad I didn’t get myself worked up about it or anything.

Look! He’s waving at me.

Oh…he looks harmless.

Dammit!

I mean whew! Nobody’s dead!

Yay.

What a relief and stuff.

Well, at least I know that I’ve got this locked and loaded and I’m totally ready to handle it when the time finally comes.

It’s a good thing I can remain so chill about it all.

Nerves. Of. Motherfreakin’. Steel.

3 Responses to “I Think I See Dead People. Seriously. All The Damn Time.”

My husband and I have 2 arguments we have all the time.
1) about getting chickens (I say yes, he says NEVER, this making it a challenge bc who says NEVER to their wife and has it end well? And
2) every time we drive by wooded areas I am convinced it is full of dead bodies and he said there is NO CHANCE there are dead bodies in the woods, so now I send him every news article I can about dead bodies being found in the woods. It’s like he’s never even seen Dateline.
I would have stopped too. Power to you, fake dead body seein’ woman.

When I was a kid I too just KNEW that someday I was going to find a body. I also thought I was going to find a horse on the side of the highway that got out somehow and I would have to ride it home. Strangely, neither has come to pass but I have not given up hope!

I have a relative that drives a school bus. One day during her rote she noticed a man lying in his front yard, feeling like something was “off” she drove back after dropping the kiddos at school….dead body.

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